• AZ Ballot: Arizona's Republican-run legislature has approved a ballot measure that would eliminate regular judicial elections, a move designed to insulate two conservative incumbents who recently upheld a near-total ban on abortion from voters this fall.
Those justices, Kathryn King and Clint Bolick, will face retention elections in November, when voters will have the chance to decide whether they merit new six-year terms with a simple yes-or-no vote. But if the GOP's new amendment were to pass that same day, the results of those judicial elections would be retroactively wiped from the books, even if King and Bolick fail to earn majority support.
In addition, their terms—and those of most other judges in Arizona—would be extended indefinitely, capped only by the state's mandatory retirement age of 70. Judges would be subject to retention elections only if they fail to demonstrate "good behavior," a high bar that would be met in very limited circumstances, such as getting convicted of a felony or filing for bankruptcy.
In April, a group called Progress Arizona announced a two-pronged campaign to unseat King and Bolick and defeat the GOP's amendment, which at the time had yet to receive final approval. Now, both the state House and Senate have signed off, though in the upper chamber, one vote in favor on Wednesday came from Republican Shawnna Bolick, who rejected Democratic calls to recuse herself despite being married to Clint Bolick.
"When you share one pillow, I think it's a conflict of interest," said Democratic Sen. Theresa Hatathlie, according to the Arizona Capitol Times.
In advancing their amendment, Republicans signaled their desperation to avoid the prospect of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs appointing replacements for King and Bolick, should the justices and the ballot measure all lose.
Judges in Arizona have rarely failed to win retention: Just six have lost at the ballot box since the state adopted the practice in 1974, and none at the Supreme Court level. But three of those judges were ousted recently, when voters denied new terms to a trio of trial court judges in populous Maricopa County in 2022.
That same year, conservative Justice Bill Montgomery survived retention with just 56% of the vote. That tally, according to the Arizona Republic's Jimmy Jenkins, was the worst-ever performance by a member of the Supreme Court in state history.
Late last year, reproductive rights advocates successfully pushed Montgomery to recuse himself from the abortion ban case after it emerged that he had said Planned Parenthood had perpetrated the "greatest generational genocide known to man." Notably, his weak showing with voters came before abortion took center stage in Arizona politics.
In their zeal to shield King and Bolick, Republicans could also wind up undermining a host of their own priorities. Including their amendment to end retention elections, lawmakers have already referred 10 different measures to the ballot in a bid to get around Hobbs' vetoes and could send even more.
In March, some Republicans expressed concerns about potential "ballot fatigue" if ballots grow too long.
"The risk is everything would fail," House Speaker Ben Toma told the Arizona Republic's Mary Jo Pitzl, but his party has not heeded his warning. Pitzl now reports that in Maricopa County, which is home to three in five Arizonans, ballots "will already be two pages long and could lap over into a third page."
In addition, voters will likely get the opportunity to weigh in on an amendment that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. Organizers said in April that they had already collected a sufficient number of signatures to qualify their proposal, but they have until July 3 to turn them in.